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It is surprising that there are still any current hosts that only support VST2. I have a couple of them.

I skimmed the manual and the comparison list a couple years ago, as well as ran the Elements 30 day trial. I was interested mainly in using the chord track, and other composing tools like the circle of fifths, etc., but I ended up getting Tracktion Waveform for it's MIDI pattern generator tools instead. I was looking into other music creativity tools that Cakewalk Sonar lacked, rather than another full featured DAW for tracking and mixing. Waveform has some cool capabilities, but sometimes I wish I had gotten Elements instead. As far as track limits go, 64 MIDI tracks is probably more than I need.

How handicapped do you find Elements only as far as MIDI features go?

If you are feeling cheap, you can install Win 10 and run it indefinitely without activating it with a product key. There will be a nag on the desktop, and a few cosmetic restrictions, but otherwise fully functional. To do this, you basically you just skip past the prompt to enter a key. You can install Home or Pro. You Don’t Need a Product Key to Install and Use Windows 10 https://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key-to-install-and-use-windows-10/ You can also upgrade to the paid version of either Home or Pro later, depending on which edition you have already installed for free. Note: The original MS offer for a free upgrade to an activated copy of Win10 has been expired for a while.

I would suggest learning both ways to do it. It will make troubleshooting easier down the road if you run into issues with routing MIDI data. Plus it will better enable you to take advantage of multi-timbral, multi-out plugins where they make sense to use. Then just choose what you need for any project.

That's a catchy tune! Did you play on that or what?

Have you been able to record audio directly using TX16Wx with Cakewalk? I have never been able to get the audio input working in TX16Wx, unless I use something else like Reaper.

Funny, but that's what I think of Reaper, Reason, and Samplitude.

Beauty is in the eye!

It's great that you had an image to roll back to! It sounds like something got corrupted during the upgrade process. It's weird how some systems are affected during some upgrades, while others are not. That's why I always image my system before any update!

It's all about the bass...

Yep, if there are any problems with registry entries, I would be careful. A plug-in reset/rescan, and or uninstall/re-install of the troubled plug-ins would probably be the best advice. Regarding Windows upgrades, one extra precaution that I always take is to disable or remove my antivirus during the upgrade process. I don't want to take a chance of anything 3rd party interfering with updates to the Windows registry or system files. Some AV programs have some aggressive "protection" features, that may include registry and system files. I prefer to let Windows have full control of access during this delicate process. Does that really help? I can't prove it, but I don't recall any recent "glitches" after upgrades since I have been using Win 10 and following that practice.

Although this won't help with Cakewalk, it's still an interesting development... Google has announced that future Chromebooks will be able to run Linux applications on the ChromeOS. Don't know how much performance this will yield for DAW apps, as Chromebooks are generally low spec machines, but there are a few DAWs that can run on Linux. https://www.wired.com/story/run-linux-apps-any-chromebook/

That's strange. I upgraded to 1809 a few months ago, and have not seen this issue. If you go to "Utilities > Cakewalk Plug-in Manager > VST Instruments (VSTi) > Addictive Drums 2" and click on "Plug-in Properties", do you see the option "Configure as synth" checked? Also I find it necessary to run the XLN installer after EVERY Windows upgrade. The license need to be refreshed as it thinks the computer ID has been changed (it has).

I tried the Cubase Elements 9 trial a couple years ago. I seem to recall that most of the MIDI tools like chord track and chord assistant were intact in Elements, but the Pro version has more features for audio editing and mixing. So just for MIDI, Elements is probably OK. Check out the trial, no dongle required for Elements.